Wrapping Up Comic-Con 2007

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The dust has settled. How did comic book companies fare?

By Richard George

As we mentioned in our preview piece, the San Diego Comic-Con is unlike anything else out there. For the typical fan, it's paradise. Freebies, stars and sneak peeks are everywhere. For those wanting autographs and original art, there is no better place to find it. Cosplayers will find hundreds of like-minded individuals. But for members of the media&#Array; "Hell" is the only suitable term that comes to mind.

In many respects the San Diego Comic-Con International (SDCC) is the same as the old E3 - albeit with many more attendees. Images have to be processed. Photos of booths and babes have to be taken. Video interviews. Panel reports. Impressions of announcements. All of this for some 400 panels and a general hall that is absolutely enormous. It's exhausting, but for anyone who isn't press, the experience is incredible - you have to try it at least once (be warned: typically going once will make you want to go again).

This year was the busiest yet for the show. Friday, Saturday and Sunday tickets were sold out days in advance or quickly after the show opened. Many panels were standing room only and attendees had to get used to crowds and lines. Emphasis has to be put on the lines, because just about every single panel had one. We have to commend the incredible staff of SDCC for generally managing the masses as well as they did. There's no such thing as a perfect show, but it worked pretty well. Future SDCCs are probably going to start clearing rooms as it's simply a necessity to avoid lines and extremely grumpy people.

As usual, panel organization and timing went fairly well, but it's always a wonder how some of the extremely popular presentations get stacked up against each other when other times seem void of anything interesting. We've noticed each year that the schedule is better, so it's hard to really complain. We're pretty sure Marvel wasn't all that pleased to see their Spider-Man: Brand New Day panel have relatively weak attendance - it was stacked against the Marvel Studios panel featuring the Iron Man and Hulk films.

We can't discuss presence at SDCC without mentioning Marvel and DC. Both publishers hosted a number of panels and had sizeable booth presence on the show floor. DC's booth was constantly jammed with fans trying to get buttons, posters and autographs, and DC Direct had an excellent display highlighting their incredible toys and collectibles, including the superb World of Warcraft line, which will begin to arrive in stores this fall.

Marvel opted away from toys, but brought one hell of a showstopper with a Stan Winston Studios-designed Iron Man Mark I armor. You can find the shots in our image galleries, but to say the thing was impressive would be a huge understatement. Marvel opened the Stark Industries crate housing the armor about once a day, and the crowds went wild. Marvel also tried to do "mini-events" this year. While creators were still on hand for autographs, they were also doing interviews. Brian Bendis, Jeph Loeb, Joe Quesada, Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker all took their hand at the journalist job throughout the weekend. Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. made an appearance to help debut the Mark I armor. Marvel also used its booth to announce the new creative team to Astonishing X-Men, which is an unconventional yet attention-grabbing approach.

Booth presence this year is an interesting debate to have. Marvel certainly had more to talk about with its events, but the booth was smaller than DC's and therefore harder to navigate, particularly if anything interesting was happening. DC was able to stand out a little more with bigger banners, more space and a very flashy presence. Marvel was pretty close though as it featured some killer art, including Joe Madureira's Ultimates 3 #1 cover, on the exterior of its booth. To be perfectly honest though, the movie and game studios have started to take command of SDCC. Anyone familiar with what E3 used to be can see that influence start to reach out here. It'll be interesting to see how Marvel and DC compete with such overwhelming force. Fortunately the movies and games are further down the hall and don't crowd out the more modest presence of book publishers.

Enough about the show itself, what about the announcements? This year we were incredibly impressed by the volume of news as well as the quality of it. Other channels will focus on their respective mediums, but comic book news was still noteworthy, even in the face of film and prime time shows. Comic book fans had a lot to digest - almost too much.

Smaller publishers made a lot of noise at this year's SDCC. Image Comics announced that it would revive some of Jack Kirby's original characters and announced a number of creator-owned properties that will roll out as the year moves along. Boom Studios made quite the splash over the weekend as it revealed that superstar writer Mark Waid had signed on to be Boom's new Editor-in-Chief. The company also hyped its new licenses, Gears of War and the Godfather. Avatar featured Warren Ellis heavily as the famed writer has a number of projects in the works with the company. IDW also promoted Angel Season Six as well as expanded plans for Transformers and 30 Days of Night.

Dark Horse didn't slouch either. The Buffy and Hellboy publisher announced several new books, including one based on Indiana Jones. No details were provided beyond that, but the concept alone was enough to get us excited. Though the company announced some other initiatives, including a Hellboy comic exclusive to the upcoming videogame, the biggest would be Dark Horse Presents. Teaming with Myspace, Dark Horse will be providing free monthly content to fans. Creators such as Joss Whedon, Ron Marz and Gerard Way will be involved in some capacity.

We've saved the biggest topic of discussion for last - the announcements made by Marvel and DC. Quite frankly we have trouble comparing them. DC's biggest announcements had little to do with the DCU. By contrast, Marvel made some major announcements for Spidey and friends. Marvel made major announcements for the Ultimate Universe, Spider-Man and X-Men. It then added a few exclusivity news items and talked about several new series. DC's biggest guns came in the form of Warcraft, Heroes and Vertigo. Warcraft has the potential to be a huge deal. It really depends on DC's ability to leverage Blizzard's IP enough to draw out the WoW players from their PCs. Original stories that actually influence the overall lore of the universe will go a long way in doing that. Much like Halo, how significant these books are will determine how much the fans embrace them. Frankly we're psyched about the Samwise and Jim Lee covers, and will jump on board just for that.